


You Do

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Fluff, M/M, Pining, The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), Touch-Starved, post-not-apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-13 05:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21239303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: He took a step back from the handclasp, felt joints that moved like water slew under him, caught himself; looked down at booted toes that seemed just that bit too far away.“Careful,” said his own voice. “Takes a moment to settle.”





	You Do

**Author's Note:**

> A Night At The Flat fic is something of a rite of passage, and Gaiman left so much white space in the script (tell me he wasn't teasing the whole 'ship thing -- this is the guy who blew up the Miracleman title by 'shipping Miracleman and Young Miracleman) that it's naturally tempting to imagine them unpacking six thousand years of restraint and denial and falling on each other like crazed weasels, but after everything they've been through, it occurred to me that things might be more like this. I had just let out all the stops -- smut, relentless fluff, waltzing, the full cast -- on my last fic and felt like writing something low-key, quiet and tender.
> 
> Also, that whole question of how to actually bring off the swap convincingly has always teased at me. On film it looks as if they've transformed their own bodies, but mutual demonic/angelic possession seemed to make the most sense. And then you've got to get into the role. A very fraught moment for people who haven't owned up to their feelings about one another.
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech

** _A Flat In Mayfair, A Week After The World Didn’t End_ **

“Budge over a bit.”

“Ngnfff.”

“You’re taking up the whole bed.”

“‘M’not. And you took all the blankets. I’m cold.”

“Well, make room for me, then.”

“Mmf. Ahhh. Nice… Warm and cuddly. Even if you do snore.”  
  
”I most certainly do not.”

“You do.”

* * *

_...let us go back._

** _ A Bookshop In Soho, The Day Of The End Of The World._ **

The circle was already drawn, the Enochian symbols perfectly inscribed; there was nothing stopping him, except the fear that he’d be opened and read like one of his own books, and there would be a voice of wrath and he’d suffer, but worse, that it wouldn't just be him. He’d never had much luck at guile; even a slight retreat from complete honesty made him waspish, testy. Except he’d succeeded for a long time in being dishonest with himself. Into which category of sin did that fall?

It had been a weakness, he thought, like the weakness he had for all things good and sensual: all the riches of food and drink, the sublimity of music, the splendor of elegant garments and the comfort of old, well-worn ones. Having an Arrangement with a demon was just one more failing. He could classify that one. _Accidie,_ sloth. Write that on a file card and put it in the box under his name. A sin that he couldn’t walk back; they were bound to each other now by the deception; that was all. A consequence of his own sloth.

Except he knew he hadn’t quit at one sin. Was it _luxuria_ he experienced when he watched the demon approach, with his ease, his hipshot walk, or _invidia, _envy, of his casual assurance, or _superbia, _pride? that this being in all the world had chosen to seek him out over the centuries, be not just his co-conspirator but his friend, he who was meant to be no one’s particular friend, because angels are impartial love, it’s right in the manual.

Until he’d said _We are not friends, we are an angel and a demon, we have nothing whatsoever in common, I don’t even like you._

_You do._ Mocking, maddening.

And off he’d stalked, damn (in the silence of his mind he could say it), damn him. If that wasn’t redundant. Because he was right, and he’d known it. More than _like. _

At first he told himself that it was gratitude, the demon had put himself in pain, _suffered_ for him, just to save him an inconvenient discorporation and all the annoying paper work, but no, also to save his books, which to Crowley must be inconsequential; he’d never seen the demon read anything more complex than a menu. No, he’d saved them because he knew _Aziraphale _cared about his books, knew all of them as if they were his children, this one with the thread trailing from the binding at the spine, that one with the skewed printing on the ninety-third page.

He told himself it was as a recompense for that kindness that he’d finally filled the Thermos with Holy Water; what kind of a cock-up (the world would be gone by tomorrow, he might as well use language like that before it all blew up, it was only in his mind after all) would it have been if either side had caught Crowley raiding a font? And what if Crowley’s accomplices had made a mess of it? What if one of them had been careless, not properly dried whatever vessel they used, splashed it on themselves and then shaken on the deal when he paid them…? Letting Crowley risk something like that was poor reward for all the times Crowley had plucked him out of the fire. They had an Arrangement; they looked after each other. That was all.

Except, of course, it wasn’t, and the tug in his belly when Crowley’d offered him a lift – _let him whisk you away, it doesn’t matter where so long as it’s just the two of you in the car, free to decide where to go next, talking or silent, it doesn’t matter, just together – _ had terrified him. In that moment he’d have walked away from whatever assignments the Head Office had saved up for him for the rest of eternity, left no forwarding address, found someplace at the ends of the galaxy where two celestial beings would have all the time in the world to open themselves, take down the walls between Heaven and Hell, heart and heart, learn what the other was like when there was no duty exerting its undertow, only the gravitational pull of one another.

He’d actually started to say something which might have been _No, I’ll go anywhere _you_ want to go,_ or even _Take me home with you, it’s been so lonely without you,_ _make me part of that little select art collection you told me about_, and then thought _wouldn’t that be a catch for Hell, he has to know it, he’s a demon, tempting is what demons do. Don’t be a fool._

Those few steps back to the shop had felt endless – he could have used a miracle, but he didn’t, to punish himself for thinking absurd thoughts, having absurd yearnings. Put them in the box too, lock the box, shut it in a drawer, lock the room where the drawer is, forget the room exists.

And Crowley had found the room, opened the drawer, picked the lock on the box, looked at what was inside, all that _luxuria _and _superbia _through the centuries, every instance noted down, as easily as glancing at your watch. Pierced right through him with those sulfur-yellow eyes when he’d said _I don’t even like you, _meaning _If I tell you how I feel then I won’t know who I am or what to do and I’ll fall so far I’ll plummet right past you; _had seen what was in him and answered with that _damned_ smug assurance, _You do._

Crowley had implored one more time – come away with me, somewhere in the far stars, it’s not too late. What did he have to gain then? _Look at this, Hell, I broke an angel, made him forswear heaven for me, let’s feast,_ what point would there have been when everyone was girding for the last battle? Or was Crowley just that much of a showoff?

Or could he. Possibly.

Aziraphale rested his elbows on the blotter, his forehead on his fists. God (who had better never, ever find out about this) help him, he was in love with a demon.

Whom he’d driven away.

Who might after all be in love with him, and maybe had been forever.

And the world wasn’t going to be here tomorrow.

* * *

His voice had always whispered when it should have shouted, questioned when it should have rung, and this time was no different. _There needn’t be a war. We can save everyone_, when what he wanted to say was _Save it. Save it because it’s imperfect and glorious, because they’re simple and stupid and blundering and beautiful, but most of all save it because he’s in it, I want another chance._

He’d always fallen silent when he should have insisted on being heard, hesitated when he needed to leap, and now he was doing it again. Crowley’d at least taken his call, given him one chance to say “Don’t go, I can save us, I can save _you,”_ and all that came out was _But._

_But I can’t. I’m a soldier of Heaven. But I can’t be your friend, we’re on opposite sides. But it’s impossible, don’t you see, _ but, but, but, but.

But it’s different now. Now I understand.

It didn’t matter. The line was still dead.

And someone was shouting. Not him. Never him,

He only knew how to whisper.

* * *

** _A Flat In Mayfair, The Evening After The World Didn’t End_ **

They would change over in the morning. If it didn’t work, they would at least have had something of one another.

Crowley’s remedy for everything was sleep. He was sprawled on the left-hand two-thirds of the bed now, still streaked with soot from the burning car, whiffing faintly of it too (or that might be brimstone; it was possible that he’d never been this close, this long; they’d been too exhausted to think of even the everyday miracle of cleaning up). The wraparound shades had been flung aside on a glass-and-metal nightstand – everything in the flat, other than the bed itself, was hard and unforgiving and angular – and in the low light they’d left burning (why? To chase away demons? Enough would come, and soon, but he needed this one here, right here) Crowley’s eyelids looked bruised, transparent, his face oddly serene.

As soon as he’d begun to doze he’d turned one way and another two or three times, limbs convoluting as if indifferently jointed with twists of wire or twine, until there was barely enough room for Aziraphale on the remainder of the bed. He lay tight and composed, hands crossed, feet together, contained as he’d been for six thousand years, and presently he realized he was near tears with it.

Gingerly, he worked his way to one side so that he could watch the demon as he slept. He was facing Aziraphale, head burrowed into the pillow in a position that didn’t look very comfortable, mouth a little slack, hair sticking up this way and that. Crowley’d always been vain of his hair. When it was long it was an oriflamme; when it was short, it was something he raked his fingers through, almost unconsciously, if he was angry or frustrated or wanted to make a point. Aziraphale wondered if he knew that. A short lock of it strayed across the pillow, and after a moment the angel stole a hand out, steadily, soundlessly, a Zeno’s Paradox of a caress that slowed as it drew nearer, until two fingertips were resting on the strands, almost touching the demon's cheek. Crowley didn’t move.

He’d crossed oceans in the days of biremes and led forced marches in the Europe of Charlemagne. Neither kind of journey seemed as perilous as the gradual dip of his head to touch his lips to the stray lock, to inhale the demon’s scent. Smoke, yes, and burnt rubber, and whatever else was clinging to him couldn’t completely overcome an aroma that he realized he’d learned without knowing it, one that was simply and distinctly _Crowley._

Crowley uttered a string of consonants and shifted in his sleep again. Slowly, feeling dangerously exposed and tremulously lighter than air, the angel lifted his head, resettled himself on the pillow. It, too, he realized, smelled of Crowley.

He could let his arm drop at a natural angle and still touch the lock of hair with his fingertips. It would look as if he had just shifted in his sleep. He didn’t know how to sleep, but he’d pretend.

* * *

“ ‘S’ time, angel.”

He wasn’t sure what had happened, where he was. Had it all ended anyhow? Was this what happened after the end? Who’d won? Then some sort of orientation came back. A square of light angled sharply on the floor. Plants were everywhere. He was lying in his crumpled clothes, scrunched to the very edge of the great plain of bed. Crowley’s hand was on his shoulder. He started to bring his own hand up to take it, remembered to stop in time.

“You were sleeping hard, so I let you. Thought y’didn’t sleep. Grows on you, dunnit?”

“Um – well, to be honest, it never happened before.”

“Clearly my bad influence.” He wasn’t wearing the glasses, yet, but his expression was still deadpan, unreadable.

Crowley had sorted himself out, dapper, quietly flash, and was drinking from an enormous mug of coffee that smelled as scorched as he had a few hours before. “Some of this?”

“Really a bit of malty tea would do better.”

“Never got the taste for it. Well… we’re due a few _frivolous miracles, _isn’t that what your side calls them?”

“They’re not – “ Aziraphale broke off, accepting the just-manifested cup of Tarajulie Assam at a perfect temperature. Crowley had been noticing things.

“Yes, angel? You were saying?”

He bought a moment gulping the tea. “I don’t think – they consider me on _their_ side any more, do you?”

“S’pose. What do you think?”

“I think we have one chance.” He stood, smoothed his crushed-looking garments. “St. James’s Park?”

“Reckon they know we go there. Ends the suspense.”

“How do we do this?”

“I’ve done something like it a few times.” _Oh, with who? Who? _“Never another – angel, though. Hm, something of yours… yes.”

The angel startled as Crowley raised hands to his collar and gently undid the tartan tie. The brush of his fingertips here and there against skin was cool, dry. He seemed to be taking his time about it, or else time was taking its time. He turned up his own collar and lifted the string tie over his head..

“Not used to this sort of kit, angel. C’n you put it on?”

Aziraphale tried to keep his hands from trembling and almost managed it. Crowley would think he was just afraid, which he was, but in a distant, detached way. After everything that had happened in the last two days fear only washed through him, like light through a threadbare curtain. Crowley held up the string tie.

“Not really your style… hm.” Crowley ran fingers through his hair, that so-often remembered gesture, winced as he plucked out several. In seconds he had woven another, identical tartan tie around them from insubstantial air; reached to drape it around the angel’s collar. Not taking his eyes off the golden irises, whose pupils seemed wider than they’d been a moment ago, Aziraphale tied it. Crowley lifted his hand

The angel reached and twined their fingers, afraid the pounding of his heart would fill the room. There was… a _lurch_ like a malfunctioning elevator, and he was looking at himself through eyes that seemed to frame the world differently, blinked in the strong morning light. (Crowley’s windows faced East. Why did that undo him somehow?) He took a step back from the handclasp, felt joints that moved like water slew under him, caught himself; looked down at booted toes that seemed just that bit too far away.

“Careful,” said his own voice. “Takes a moment to settle.”

“We’ll have to… actually _be_ each other,” he realized. The words came out in Crowley’s gravelly tones. “How can we…”

“My dear boy, after all these centuries, do we not know one another? I certainly know you.”

His face, beaming at him beatifically; his voice, speaking in his cadence.

“Walk around a bit, you’ll feel your way into it.”

_I am you_, he thought, stumbling, then beginning to glide around the flat. Take down the walls between Heaven and Hell, heart and heart. The body remembered what he didn’t know how to do, began to ignore the close-held containment with which he had always moved. The hips slid, making him ripple with almost offhand sensual feeling. _Luxuria. _He wondered how he looked to Crowley, envying the ease with which the demon had put him on like an old coat. _Invidia._

He raked his fingers through the hair, wondering if he’d lifted any of the same strands he’d touched last night. “I do think you have it,” said Crowley in his voice, to his melody.

“I’m quite terrified, you know.”

“Think of it as a game,” said Crowley. “ ‘S’what I always do when things go pear-shaped. Yeah, it’s life and death, but then so’s crossing the street.”

“Not for us, not like this.”

“But it is for them. That’s why we did what we did – right?”

He wanted to say _yes, yes for them, yes for the world and the apple trees and the children and the lovers, for the wine and the symphonies and the silent sunrises and the crammed streets, but most of all for you, I did it for you._

Instead he leaned back against a table which held only three or four huge star atlases, one lying open, crossed his ankles and said “S’pose so.”

“Oh definitely, you’re finding your way into it.”

They both grinned helplessly.

“Glasses, if you please.”

“You do me well.”

“Do I.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“Watch out for Uriel,” he said finally. “She’s a sneaky little f – “ It didn’t quite come out.

“Nice try, not required.”

“I only mean that if anyone sees through it – well, Gabriel’s too busy admiring himself and Sandalphon’s too busy thinking how much he likes to inflict punishment, and I can’t fathom Michael. I never could. It’ll likely be them. They’re more or less the cabal these days.”

“Heaven seems to have evolved oddly, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps…Crowley, don't you wear underwear?" _Luxuria_ was now becoming a disturbing confusion. He wasn't sure what to do with the information that the demon dressed on the left. "And your socks are halfway down your shoes. If this is going to go the way we think... Give me a moment to miracle up some modesty. And proper garters." Was that a sly look on his own face?

"Time to get a wiggle on, isn’t it?” He paused. “What if it isn’t what we thought? Agnes Nutter was so, well, cryptic…”

“Then we’ll just have to improvise. Game, angel.”  
  
Crowley (_his own face, his own hands_) rose, stepped closer, extended a hand; a single fingertip not-quite-touched his cheek so that he could barely feel its warmth.

“You look good as me,” said his own voice. Timid and longing. Crowley had him exactly right. “I’ll go by the bookshop first. Something tells me it’s all tickety-boo. Ice cream trolley in the park at noon.”

* * *

** _Back At The Flat, From Heaven And Hell_ **

“Buggeration, I should have known better. Hell takes something out of you, but I’m used to it. This way – lean on me. Just a few more steps, there you are. Upsy-daisy.”

Breath huffed out of him as he fell back on the expanse of Crowley’s bed, the demon bending to lift the almost dead weight of his legs and swivel them onto the coverlet. Easing his shoes off, seated at his feet.

“Never knew you to sleep before, that should have told me something. Could’ve knocked me cold with one of my own feathers when – “ Crowley fell silent, levered him up far enough to peel away the jacket, and loosened his tie. Another pillow went behind his head.

It had seemed fine, the food at the Ritz was Heavenly (better than Heavenly, he thought, no one in Heaven knew a good meal from a dodo), and they’d made toast after toast, first the world, then Adam, then Madame Tracy, then Agnes Nutter…he’d lost track of how many times they’d raised their hands to the waiter for another bottle. Usually their capacity was heroic, but he remembered feeling distinctly swimmy when they left the restaurant, the light that lay across the grass of St. James’ Park seeming to ripple from something that was not entirely mere intoxication, and just as they passed the ice-cream trolley the memory of that one brutal blow echoed through him again and his knees gave. Crowley had turned back just in time to catch him, walk him to a bench and bend him forward, as recommended in all the best first-aid manuals, which he seemed unlikely to have read.

“I’ll be all right in a moment, it’s nothing – “

“Shut it. I’ll get a cab.”

The driver had taken a little persuading. “He bokes in my cab, mate, you’re payin’,” he’d said, but Crowley shoved a wad of notes at him and that was the end of that discussion, though Aziraphale sensed that something unwholesome happened to the cab’s steering-gear even as it pulled away. Crowley’s lean strength was holding him up. The slow rise and chunk of the elevator, a hall that seemed endless, then a door whose wards gave to Crowley’s gesture, then the broad bed.

“I’m sorry, my dear. The bottom just dropped out, I’m afraid."

“Tea?”

“No, just this.” _This _was the embrace of the pillows, the healing stillness, but also simply being here with Crowley, done with Hell and Heaven.

The bed shifted as the demon settled himself on the other side, propping himself on one elbow.

“Done up myself. Think about it – between us, drove through fire, stormed Heaven, harrowed Hell, took a trip through Tracy’s head, saved the world from the Four Fucking Horsemen, oh yeah, babysat the Antichrist. Pretty full dance card for just a couple of days.” Crowley rolled to his back. “Oh, almost forgot, possessed each other.”

Aziraphale’s heart gave a little lurch.

“What do we do now?” he said. The room was ceasing to move around quite so much.

“Whatever we want, I s’pose. Thinking of sleeping for a week myself. Want to try it?”

“I doubt – “

“Oh, last night you were champion at it. Snored. Even drooled on me.”

“ – _On _you?”

Aziraphale could feel the demon tensing a little even with his eyes closed and his head swimming.

“Um. Well I woke up, and you had your – you were wrapped around me so tight I thought I should ask _you _for serpent lessons.”

Aziraphale wondered if he might faint again.

“Busted, angel.”

“What did – “

“Held you till the sun came up. Hope you’ll excuse it. Figured maybe we were about to die, gave me nerve.”

“You always had _nerve…”_

The angel chuckled weakly. Then caught his breath as he felt fingertips brush up his shoulder, an arm settle lightly across his chest.

“This all right?”

“It’s lovely.”

He laid his hand over Crowley’s. It really was quite lovely. The hum of wired fatigue began to lessen. Heaven had been a little like this before it had become something else.

“I was always afraid you only wanted to tempt me, you know.”

“I know.”

“I mean as something to hunt and catch.”

“Well, that, yes.” The demon’s tone was tinged with smirk. “Just not the way I think you mean it.”

Aziraphale shifted so he could reach to ruffle the untidy red hair. The sensation blended with the memory of being in Crowley’s body. Both arms tightened around him.

“You should be kinder to yourself,” he found himself saying out of nowhere. “This flat. There’s nothing soft in it.”

“There’s you.”

He realized, headily, that Crowley’s face was pressed against him, inhaling his scent as he’d breathed Crowley’s in the night.

“Reckon I haven't thought of anything so often in the past six thousand years as I’ve thought of what it would be to hold you like this.”

The tousled hair was softer than it looked, pleasant to stroke absently; he kept drowsing off, twitching awake.

“I’ve thought of… ah… do you know, I’ve thought of – _lots_ of things. Deadly sins you could teach me. _Luxuria._ I could never… And I’m too tired and blurry right now to…”

“All the time in the world, angel.”

“Just hold me, then.”

"We can go to Alpha Centauri tomorrow, maybe. Together. You'd like it. Or stay in bed all day..."

The room started to drift. The box was open, the cards were scattering in the wind, there was nothing more to hide away.

“I just want to have you there. For the rest of forever.” A whisper, but it sounded like a trumpet in his own ears.

“You do, angel. You do.”

_finis_


End file.
